Rice flies to India to ease tension with Pakistan

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-12-03 09:20

NEW DELHI -- US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew to New Delhi on Tuesday hoping to ease tension between India and Pakistan that has surged over the Mumbai attacks and put at risk US counterterrorism efforts in the region.

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer (L), US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (R) and Britain's Foreign Secretary David Miliband (R) pose for a group photo at the end of a NATO foreign ministers meeting at the Alliance headquarters in Brussels December 2, 2008. [Agencies]

The three-day rampage by 10 Islamist gunmen in India's financial capital last week stoked longstanding Indian suspicions that Pakistan is unwilling, or unable, to stop militants on its soil from attacking India.

Rice cut short a European tour to go to India to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who is under election-year pressure to craft a muscular response to opposition criticism that his ruling Congress party is weak on security.

Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said military action was not being considered but later warned a peace process begun in 2004 was at risk if Pakistan did not act decisively.

His Pakistani counterpart offered a joint probe to find the militants responsible for the killing spree in Mumbai in which 183 people were killed.

"We don't want to do anything in haste. We don't want to do anything that fuels confrontation," Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told reporters after an all-party meeting on relations with India. "We want to defuse the situation."

Pakistan has warned that any military escalation by India would prompt it to shift troops to the Indian border, and away from its western frontier with Afghanistan where US forces are carrying out an anti-militant campaign.

The United States, Britain and the European Union this week urged Pakistan's civilian government to cooperate with the probe. Islamabad denied involvement and condemned the attacks, and has said it is battling the same kind of enemy at home.

Mumbai's police chief Hasan Gafoor said the attackers had trained for a year or more in commando tactics.

Azam Amir Kasav, the only gunmen of the 10 not killed by commandos, told investigators he is a Pakistani citizen from Punjab, Gafoor said.

Investigators have said a former Pakistani army officer led the training, organized by the Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba group blamed for a 2001 attack on India's parliament. Ibrahim is said to be one of its financial backers.

The 2001 attack nearly set off the fourth war between the two countries since Muslim Pakistan was carved from Hindu-majority India in 1947 after independence from Britain.

US officials say the attacks bear the hallmarks of operations by groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, both of which have fought Indian rule in Kashmir.

"I don't think we can rule out al Qaeda, I just don't think we know at this point," a US official said on condition of anonymity.

Many Indians have expressed anger at apparent intelligence lapses and a slow security reaction to the attacks against Mumbai's two best-known luxury hotels and other landmarks in the city of 18 million.